1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is in the field of telephony communications including data network telephony (DNT) and Internet Protocol network telephony (IPNT) and pertains particularly to a virtualization of contact center resources for use by one or more virtual contact centers to provide services to subscribers.
2. Discussion of the State of the Art
In the field of telephone communications, state-of-art contact centers are continually being improved. Many centers today can provide services to customers accessing the center through a telephone network or through the Internet network. Calls can now be routed between disparate networks and into a contact center queue from virtually any network-connected access point. A physical contact center may include one or more telephone switching facilities and internal telephone system; a local area network (LAN); connected workstations (service terminals), an interactive voice response system; an email routing system; one or more application servers; and one or more data management systems including customer relations management and internal data management systems.
Many companies outsource their sales and customer service functions to third-party-managed service organizations that provide contact center services for the companies according to a service level agreement (SLA). The managed service provider may provide or allow access to contact center infrastructure and equipment; computing infrastructure and equipment; service agents with appropriate skills; payment processing; and data management services.
A physical contact center may service more than one company up to its capacity for handling the traffic. Service level objectives (SLOs) are typically defined regarding service levels for each company relative to business interaction with customers. Estimated wait time (EWT) in queue and other quality of service (QoS) issues are at the forefront. A physical set of contact center resources has a defined limit in what it can provide in the way of service capacity. It may be underutilized during wan periods and over utilized during peak periods causing a loss in business and internal stability.
Some managed service providers have formed federations comprising multiple physical contact centers networked together to form a federation of services. A federated contact center typically has a service level agreement (SLA) with a company to provide specific services at a specific level of quality of service. In a federated contact center system resources may be distributed over a network and incoming traffic for a specific company can be distributed to multiple service locations for handling, usually transparent to the caller.
There are many different models available in the art for providing contact center services, including federated services, however all of these service models are static models and particularly inflexible relative to short term demands of a subscriber company. It has occurred to the inventor that if a physical set of resources could be virtualized by exposing those resources in an abstract way to a virtual interface, then the physical resources could be managed for use much more efficiently and in a more flexible manner with respect to shifting service demands.
Therefore what is needed in the art is a virtual contact center system separated by a virtualization layer from one or more physical contact centers. A system such as this would be more efficient and add more flexibility than a federated system of call centers.